Love And Peace Energy

Over the years, I’ve heard people say that guilt is the necessary emotion that keeps us from hurting each other or that anger motivates us to change. I disagree. I believe that love is the most powerful force. Love is what actually keeps us from hurting each other. Love is what motivates us to create positive change.

When people we know and care about die or suffer grave injury or if we suffer grave injury, we might ask why. Perhaps with great emotional angst, “Why?” Asking the question implies that there is an answer. But we experience our stages of grief and, in the end, find that there is no answer. It just is. Yes, we can analyze the catalyst in the situation—a drunk driver, a mix-up in medications, an assault. Why did a drunk driver appear just at that moment? Why was an intern in charge of medication disbursement that day? Why did the assailant choose to be in that location at that time? In truth, we cannot know.

We are left to accept what is, and we can take action to assuage our grief: We can mobilize our society for greater awareness about drunk driving. We can attempt to change the laws about interns disbursing medications in our hospitals. We can work to have our communities hire more police or ban guns. Yet even those good causes will not change what is: your loved one is gone; your friend or you are in the hospital with a serious injury. To resist that reality is to live in an emotional pain that can be longer lasting and more devastating than the physical pain. 

I was a young adult in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I identified as a pacifist. I marched against war in Vietnam, and I was angry at the military and all the men who ran my country, the United States of America. I was not living in unconditional acceptance. I believe the marches for peace played a significant part in ending the Vietnam War, but those marches did nothing to end my personal, internal war. I had no peace inside of me—even when the Vietnam War ended.

Peace Energy 

Resistance to war, like resistance to anything, energizes what we resist by focusing our attention on it. Putting our energy into resolving internal conflict, creating inner peace, establishing peace in our communities, teaching compassionate understanding in our schools and other institutions, and supporting organizations such as the U.S. Institute for Peace and the InternationalInstitute for Peace that seek to settle conflict nonviolently are the solutions to ending crime, violence and war.

Here’s an example of something that I imagine most Americans have experienced: Over the years and on numerous occasions when I would call to speak with a member of the customer service department at my bank, gas and electric company, credit card company, cable television company, or other major entities on whom I rely for my daily living, I would find myself waiting an inordinate amount of time, listening to repetitive recorded messages, and sometimes getting disconnected after being on hold for a very long time. The powerlessness I felt used to infuriate me!

I began the process ofchangingmy response to situations like this when I started whittling away at my beliefs that I was ―insignificant‖ and, thus, unworthy of prompt attention. As I altered my thinking and acknowledged my self-loving intentions, I began to appreciate myself more. And as I did this, I stopped allowing people, including myself, to mistreat me.

As my self-concept changed and my self-esteem rose, I became more and more uncomfortable with psychological pain and more aware that I wanted and could choose to feel peace. So, when I found myself needing to make a phone call to one of those corporations, I would remember that I would, most likely, have a long wait time and I began to put my phone on the ―speaker‖ setting so that I could continue to check my e-mails, read my book or tidy my house. If, once again, my phone call would be disconnected, I would just peacefully redial and continue to do what I wanted or needed to do.

Could I have done this earlier in my life? Not really. At that earlier time, I didn’t have the emotional foundation I needed to think aboutmyself in a caring way and to take the actions that would make life easier for me. I had to do the growth work first. I am truly grateful for how I take care of myself now… as well as forspeakerphones. 

Maybe you experience outrage over having to wait a very long time to speak with a customerservice representative. Maybe your outrage is caused by a completely different set of beliefs. Maybe you believe that you, of all people, shouldn’t have to wait while someone whose time, you deem, is less valuable than yours takes his or hersweet time to respond to your call?

My example of feeling insignificant of timely assistance and the above example of feeling overly important are extremes on the continuum of beliefs that keep us locked into upsetting emotional states. Once we create a more loving relationship within ourselves, we are more capable of choosing unconditional acceptance of what is, which fosters peace and allows us to choose actions that create peacefulness, like finding something worthwhile to occupy our time while we are waiting on hold.